Hero Survival – Game Review

Hero Survival is one of the latest indie games hoping to cash in on the popular sub genre popularized by Vampire Survivors. Bringing brighter graphics and a more cheerful art style to the genre let’s look at Hero Survival.

Developer: PigeonDev

Publisher: Meridian4

Platform: Windows (Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

Release Date: 18th October 2023

Age Rating: 3

Story of Hero Survival

As a roguelike survivorslike game Hero Survival doesn’t really feature any story but more of a gameplay loop. In which you select your character and starting weapon, which all vary in stats, and try to survive the set number of rounds.  Each zone will have you survive 8 rounds before facing the boss on the ninth.

Analysis of Hero Survival

Pros

Hero Survival on Steam
Image Source: Steam

The cartoony, pixel art style is very warm and appealing. The bright vibrant colors is a nice contrast to the darker tones and art styles of similar games such as Vampire Survivors. Weapon variety is there, a must have for any survivors like game, and includes staples such as the SMG, pistol, shotgun, sniper, and more. The only drawback being you can only get a new weapon or item (that enhances your stats) when you pass each round. This seems way to slow and does hinder the pacing of the runs.

Where Hero Survival is more unique is in its mechanic of holding four weapons in a grid around the player, which automatically shoot. This is similar to how in Just King where you have four character slots around your King where you insert minions of your choosing. Weapons however are stuck in place so wherever you mount them there stuck there! Which does add a bit of strategy to an otherwise mindless experience, not that that’s a bad thing. It’s good to shut our brains off a bit time to time.

Hero Survival on Steam
Image Source: Steam

Upon your first level up, you are tasked to choose between three different skill trees. The first focuses on bombs, second enhancing your bullets, and lastly ice elemental. These vary your runs quiet significantly and does offer a good bit of replay ability because of it. Another place where Hero Survival shows a good variety is in the enemy design. The game offers much more variety than recently released Hellboy: Web of Wyrd and all for a fraction of the price! You have ghosts, armoured things, all sorts, and that’s just the first level!

Hero Survival on Steam
Image Source: Steam

As for performance on the steam deck it runs really well. I had no issues what so ever and got good battery life.

Cons

Hero Survival on Steam
Image Source: Steam

The characters are pretty steeply priced which is ok for the later ones, but I would have preferred to have a couple of cheap characters. I think this would have added extra variety early on in the game. You also can’t see the stats of your equipped weapons until you have picked your reward, meaning you may sometimes accidently waste your pick on a worse weapon. The game shows promise but the is many areas that require some work. 

Hero Survival on Steam
Image Source: Steam

The real drawback of the game is the in game leveling system, with most upgrades being stat boosts that last for a single level. Mechanic wise this is unique but not entertaining, you find yourself getting frustrated with it. You also have to constantly adapt your playstyle to adjust for the upgrades you have just lost. The only other upgrades available are for your skill tree and healing. Healing in particular seems to be rarer than a flying pig, with me only ever encountering around 1-2 per run.

Summary of Hero Survival

Hero Survival - SteamSpy - All the data and stats about Steam games
Image Source: SteamSpy

Hero Survival shows real promise through its weapon, enemy, and character variety, that makes its core gameplay loop entertaining but without many permanent upgrades it doesn’t feel rewarding. The bright graphics bring a more cheerful art style to the survivors-like genre and helps the game stand out against others in the subgenre. However, it feels light on features. I suggest keeping an eye on development and seeing if they enhance the game in the recent future. Right now it’s a bit of a hollow game with a very shiny  coat on it.

Overall Rating: 5 – Average!  

Platform Played On: Steam Deck

Game Time At Review: 5.5 Hours

Recommendation: No (Wait for more upgrades)

You can buy Hero Survival on Steam

Links

List

Borderlands 3 – Game Review

Borderlands 3 saw players return to the vault hunting looter shooter on a wider scale. Setting the story across multiple …

Movie Cinema Simulator – Game Review

Everyone has wanted to run their own cinema at some point in their lives, for me it’s whenever I fancy …

Bodkin – Miniseries Review

Bodkin, starring Will Forte and Shioban Cullen released in May on Netflix. This sleeper thriller comedy flew under my radar …

Maniac – Game Review

Taking all the glorious mayhem that Grand Theft Auto has popularized and setting it in a more cartoony arcade game, …

Palworld (Early Access) – Game Review

Palworld took over the internet by storm with just a couple of trailers and sneak peaks. The premise of Pokémon …

Pesticide Not Required – Game Review

Another Roguelike game to brace the Steam store page, Pesticide Not Required sees players take on the role of a …